Alfredo Saad-Filho Inflation Theory A Critical Literature Review and A New Research Agenda
Alfredo Saad-Filho Inflation Theory A Critical Literature Review and A New Research Agenda
Alfredo Saad-Filho Inflation Theory A Critical Literature Review and A New Research Agenda
Alfredo Saad-Filho
ABSTRACT
Marxian analyses of inflation tend to fall under three broad categories,
those that emphasise primarily the role distributive conflicts, monopoly
power, or state intervention on the dynamics of credit money. This article
reviews these interpretations, and indicates how they can be integrated.
The proposed approach, based on the 'extra money' view, departs from the
circuit of capital and the endogeneity of credit money in order to explain
inflation in inconvertible paper money systems.
INTRODUCTION
The social and economic upheavals associated with the collapse of the 'golden
age' of capitalism stimulated important developments in the Marxian analyses
of inflation, l However, the interest of Marxian researchers in developing the
insights of the 1970s and 1980s has declined sharply recently, along with their
numbers and influence.2 This is largely due to the shift of the economic debate
towards the right, especially since the mid-1970s, the shifting interests of the
best known non-mainstream researchers, and the long-term decline in inflation
in the 1980s and 1990s, which is often presented as one of the most remarkable
achievements of the neoliberal (or neomonetarist) economic policies (Arestis &
Sawyer, 1998).
335
336 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
makes the analysis applicable across a broad range of theories. For example,
conflict theories are endorsed across the radical spectrum, the monopoly capital
analysis owes much to Kalecki and Steindl, and certain aspects of the extra
money approach are close to Post Keynesian and circuitist analyses. The
critique in Sections I to III focuses on the agencies causing inflation and the
linkages underlying the inflationary process (Fine & Rustomjee, 1996).
Agencies can be identified from the theories of class, production, the state, and
the ensuing analysis of the social conflicts expressed in and through inflation.
Linkage s include the institutional context of inflation (especially the relation-
ship between the state, industry, finance, the workers, and the foreign sector),
and the propagation mechanisms that lead economic instability and social
conflict to surface as inflation. This involves, in particular, the money supply
and price-setting mechanisms, and the power of monetary and fiscal policy.
I. C O N F L I C T AND INFLATION
A. Conflict Theories
Conflict analyses are inspired by cost-push theories, that were very popular in
the 1950s-70s. They usually depart from equilibrium, and assume that the
money supply is fully endogenous, that fiscal and monetary policies are
passive, and that key agents (especially the monopoly capitalists and unionised
workers) have market power and can set the price of their goods or services
largely independently of demand. Inflation arises because the sum of claims
over the national product (which depends on target real income levels, shares
of the national product, or income growth rates) is greater than the real income
available. If the demand for money and credit is always satisfied, inflation
necessarily follows. The rate of inflation is a positive function of the size of the
overlapping claims, the frequency of price and wage changes and the degree of
capacity utilisation, and a negative function of the rate of productivity growth.
Inflation rates can become downwardly rigid (inertia) if some agents index-link
their prices or incomes, in which case each negative shock leads to permanently
338 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
higher inflation rates. In sum, there is inflation because the central bank
validates, directly or through its support for the financial system, incompatible
demands for shares of the national income through monetary accommodation,
in an attempt to protect the financial institutions and ensure the continuity of
production.
This argument can be presented very simply as follows (see Kotz, 1987;
Lavoie, 1992, ch. 7). The value of the current output Y is:
Y=Py=kwL
where P is the price level, y is the real output, w is the money wage rate, L is
the volume of employment, and k is the mark-up on wages (presumably the
largest cost component). The price level is:
kwL
e_---
Y
where L/y is the inverse of the average physical productivity of labour, v. It
follows that:
kw
e=--
v
If a hat denotes growth rates (the rate of inflation is/3 = Pl - P0), then:
P0
This model indicates that inflation is due to increases in the mark up or in the
wage rate in excess of the rate of productivity growth. The model can be refined
endlessly by incorporating target income levels, expectations, reaction
functions, and limits on the wage claims because of unemployment, or on the
mark up because of competition. It naturally follows that, when inflation is
anticipated, the process of income transfer becomes less efficient and inflation
rates must increase in order to achieve the same results. Eventually, the costs
of inflation may become so high that the state must intervene, usually on behalf
of (monopoly) capital (see Section II).
The conflict approach has been used to explain two types of inflation,
cyclical or structural. In the first case, inflation is relatively low in the upswing
because of the substantial spare capacity, high unemployment, and high
productivity growth. Inflation tends to rise towards the end of the boom, when
the slack has been absorbed and worker militancy tends to increase (Boddy &
Crotty, 1976). Cyclical conflict inflation declines with the onset of the
recession, which can be engineered by the state in order to 'restore the balance
Inflation Theory: A Critical Literature Review and a New Research Agenda 339
B. Assessment
Widely different theories of value, production and class are compatible with the
conflict approach. Classes are sometimes seen as partners, in which case it is
presumably easy to achieve economic stability through negotiated incomes
policies. Alternatively, a theory of exploitation may be used; in this case,
economic stability can be obtained only through the subordination of the
workers by force. This potential ambiguity makes the conflict approach
Inflation Theory: A Critical Literature Review and a New Research Agenda 341
aspect of any Marxian theory of inflation, for inflation would not persist in the
absence of widespread dissatisfaction about the level and/or distribution of the
national income, and the monetisation of those incompatible claims (Burdekin
& Burkett, 1996, p. 13).
A. Inflation Theory
The monopoly power approach argues that state support for the monopolies is
essential for economic stability and growth, because the monopoly sector
includes the most dynamic finns and the largest investors, employers,
producers and exporters. For this reason, the state provides cheap infrastructure
to the monopolies, offers tax breaks, finances directly or indirectly part of their
R&D costs, and supports their foreign ventures. More broadly, the state spends
huge sums in civil servants' wages, consumables, and public investment, funds
health, education and defence, and makes large transfers associated with social
security. These expenditures support monopoly profits directly through
purchases, and indirectly through transfers to their customers. The inter-
ventionist policies of the welfare state delivered unprecedented economic
stability, high employment and rapid growth, especially between the late 1940s
and the late 1960s. However, they also contributed to persistent budget deficits,
rising public debt, and creeping inflation.
The relative economic stability in the postwar era simplified economic
calculation and facilitated the credit financing of investment by the monopolies.
At this point, two stories are possible. On the one hand, it can be argued that
Inflation Theory: A Critical Literature Review and a New Research Agenda 343
B. Assessment
Two agencies are responsible for inflation, monopolies and the state. Let us
deal with the monopolies first. The monopoly power-underconsumption
approach argues that the concentration and centralisation of capital are
fundamental processes within capitalism, leading inexorably to monopolisa-
tion. In spite of its important (but insufficiently grounded) theoretical stature,
there is no attempt to develop a distinctly Marxian theory of monopoly power
and, even if we assume that monopoly power is generally increasing, the theory
fails to identify the correct level of analysis. It is unclear how monopoly power
affects the circuit of capital, the circulation of money and the distribution of
income, whether or not it can be avoided, and to what extent it makes inflation
inevitable. (In particular, it is left unclear why monopoly should lead to
inflation rather than to one-off changes in relative prices.) The theory of
monopoly pricing is particularly weak, although it is essential for the analysis
of inflation. It relies on a simple collation of the ideas in Hilferding (1981, ch.
15), for whom monopolies impose prices above the prices of production in
order to reap extra profits, and Kalecki, for whom monopoly power is a stylised
fact and monopolies reap extra profits because of their market power. 6 It is
argued that monopoly prices are determined strategically, in order to maximize
344 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
firm growth, market share or long-run profits, subject to the need to prevent
new entries, and are sticky downwards. In Marxist garb, they capture
superprofits because of their market power, which may be transfers from the
competitive sector or from the workers (in which case the wages fall below the
value of labour power). Unfortunately, these potential developments of Marx's
theory of price are not pursued systematically. Moreover, there is scant
empirical evidence to support the analysis, in spite of the strong assumptions
involved (e.g. that monopolies can raise prices almost at will but that, in spite
of this power, they often wait for a recession before doing so - yet, they fail to
reduce prices in the upturn). Moreover, important theoretical objections to the
'Hilferding-Kalecki synthesis' are not addressed adequately (for example, the
threat of entry of domestic and foreign producers may be sufficient to force
monopolistic firms to follow competitive pricing strategies, Baumol, 1982; see,
however, Kotz, 1982, 1987). The role of demand and other limits to monopoly
power are also often neglected, as are the counter-tendencies to the
concentration and centralisation of capital.
The theory of the state is also left unclear, and what is said is potentially
contradictory. On the one hand, the state manages the economy relatively
autonomously in order to ensure the reproduction of capital as a whole, which
requires the accommodation of the interests of different fractions of capital and
of the workers, and is best achieved in a democracy (O'Connor, 1973). On the
other hand, the state has also been seen as little more than a tool of powerful
(monopoly) interests, and its policies are limited by the need to obtain their
consent, in which case fascism is a clear possibility (Morris, 1974). 7
The workers have no autonomous role, but there seems to be an underlying
possibility of social conflict in production and distribution, which is partly
responsible f o r the activist state policies. There is an uneasy relationship
between the presumably fundamental opposition between workers and
capitalists, and the analytical neglect of the working class, which is generally
a spectator of the unfolding events. It is curious that the workers are,
apparently, strong enough to prevent the extraction of additional surplus value
in production, but not to avoid transfers in circulation through monopoly
pricing - even when unemployment is low. The role of the financial system is
not analysed in detail, and the balance of payments constraint is generally
neglected (which may be explained by the focus on the relatively closed U.S.
economy). Essentially, inflation is the result of interventionist economic
policies trying to ensure full employment and social stability, in an economy
constrained by monopoly power and pricing strategies (Best, 1972).
The linkages connecting monopoly power, state policies and inflation are left
mostly unexplained. There is no clear theory of money, credit or finance, except
Inflation Theory: A Critical Literature Review and a New Research Agenda 345
theories of inflation and it can incorporate, when this is warranted, some of the
best insights of the other approaches.
in the economy, the degree of concentration of capital, and other variables that
make the 'supply' and 'demand' for money extremely difficult to estimate.
Second, and more specifically, even though the supply of credit money
necessarily corresponds to individual demand (credit money is always created
in response to a loan request), the total credit supply may not reflect the needs
of the economy as a whole. This is clearly the case when speculative loans help
to inflate a real estate or stock market bubble, or when banks unwittingly
finance the production of unprofitable or unsaleable goods (Itoh & Lapavitsas,
1999; Lapavitsas, 1991; see also Mandel, 1968, pp. 254--259).
In order to show how discrepancies between money supply and demand can
lead to inflation, the extra money approach starts from the circuit of capital.
The productive circuit begins when a capitalist draws on previously
accumulated funds or borrows newly created credit money in order to finance
production. The injection of these funds into the economy increases the ratio
between money and output value. If more output is eventually produced and
sold at its normal price (the price of production), the initial increase in the ratio
between money and value is cancelled out by the output growth. The sale of the
output creates additional income, which is used to repay debts, to finance
accumulation by the firm, or it may be distributed as profit or dividends.
However, if the output cannot be not sold, or is sold only at a discount, the
firm suffers a loss which may be absorbed in two ways. Very simply, if the
'market rules' are strictly respected, a well-defined agent, or set of agents,
bears the cost, usually the firm (through a decline in the value of its assets), or
its bank (if the firm goes bankrupt). At a further remove, the firm may try to
offset their losses through transfers from other agents, for example its workers
(if the rate of exploitation increases, perhaps only temporarily), or its customers
(if the firm has unused monopoly power and raises prices in other lines).
'Market' solutions such as these can be destabilising, because they may
systematically lead to unemployment, capacity underutilisation, the deteriora-
tion of the working conditions, and financial fragility. They may also lead to
inflation (if the firm increases prices to cover its losses, possibly inducing other
firms to respond in kind; see section II.A) or deflation (if the firm reduces
prices in order to boost sales, or if demand declines because of unemployment
or a financial crisis).
Alternatively, the loss may be socialised if the 'market rules' are violated.
This may happen in two different ways. The bank may refinance the firm's
debt, or the firm may receive a state subsidy (in the extreme, it may be
348 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
If the extra money is spent rather than being saved elsewhere in the economy,
or destroyed in the repayment of loans, it may induce a (potentially multiplied)
quantity response in those sectors operating with substantial spare capacity (the
'Keynesian' scenario). In this case, eventually there will be more money and
more commodities in circulation, which cancels the extra money and may
restore the previous relationship between value and money at a higher level of
income and output, regardless of equilibrium assumptions. However, if the
extra money increases demand in a sector without spare capacity, and if
additional imports are not available (the 'monetarist' case), the monetary
expression of labour rises. This increase is established through an increase in
prices in this market, ostensibly because of excess demand. This is extra money
inflation. (If the economy is highly unbalanced, with bottlenecks in some
sectors and substantial spare capacity in other sectors, it is likely that high
inflation and high unemployment will coexist. This is the 'structuralist'
scenario.)
Extra money inflation can happen regardless of monopoly power or
distributive conflicts, although it is usually a reflex of one or both of them. It
may be due to state intervention, but the state cannot be generally 'blamed' for
it because extra money is routinely, and necessarily, created by private
decisions that are not subject to state control (as was shown above). Moreover,
even if the extra money is created by the state it is impossible to know in
advance where it will go, and whether it will have a quantity or price effect, or
both (targeting is possible, but necessarily imprecise). In due course,
discrepancies between the quantity of circulating money and demand
(determined by the 'needs of trade') will tend to be eliminated by changes in
output, velocity or hoards. However, these adjustments take time, and they may
create additional instability through their effects on prices, the exchange rate,
the balance of payments or the interest rate. ~4 If the monetary discrepancies
outlined above are continually renewed, they can lead to persistent inflation,
severe balance of payments disequilibria and prolonged economic stagnation,
which demonstrate the non-neutrality of money and its potential influence over
production. This analysis implies that the coexistence of inflation and
unemployment is natural, because inflation is due to the propagation of
localised devaluations of money. Finally, it may be inferred that the changes in
relative prices that necessarily coexist with inflation are a reflex of the
structural differences between systems of provision) 5
The extra money approach does not imply that governments should try to
eliminate extra money in order to control inflation. The regular creation and
destruction of extra money is necessarily part and parcel of the circuit of
capital. Contractionary monetary policies usually reduce the quantity of extra
350 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
money being injected into the economy, but even the most draconian policies
cannot eliminate extra money completely, for two reasons. First, because the
economic and social costs of higher unemployment, lower investment and
economic stagnation eventually becomes excessively high. Second, because the
state cannot control all the potential sources of extra money, including the
private financial system, the foreign sector, the savings behaviour of the
workers and capitalists, and so on. In other words, the regular operation of the
financial system, state economic policies and the economy's international
relations inevitably involve the regular creation and destruction of extra money,
and they may lead to inflation or deflation whatever policies the state pursues
(in spite of these limitations, persistent inflation is clearly more likely if the
state intervenes extensively in the economy and if its policies are expan-
sionary).
In spite of their apparent similarity, the theory of extra money inflation is
incompatible with the quantity theory of money. The quantity theory's
assumptions that money supply is exogenous, that money is only a medium of
exchange and that money is not hoarded, are wrong and unacceptable from the
perspective of the extra money approach. First, this approach argues that extra
money is regularly and spontaneously created by the interaction between the
central bank, commercial banks, firms and workers, and that its quantity cannot
be controlled, or even known precisely, by the state. In contrast, the quantity
theory presumes that the banking system is always fully loaned up, and that the
central bank can determine autonomously the supply of money directly
(through the monetisation of government budget deficits or purchases of
government securities) or indirectly (through changes in compulsory bank
reserves, which should lead unproblematically to changes in the outstanding
stock of loans). Other sources of changes in the supply of money are usually
ignored, and the possibility that changes initiated by the central bank will be
neutralised by hoarding, the repayment of bank loans or by a compensatory
change in bank loans are generally neglected by the quantity theory.
Second, extra money is non-neutral in the short and in the long run; it may
change irreversibly the level and composition of the national product and the
structure of demand, depending on how it is created and how it circulates. In
contrast, the quantity theory presumes that money is neutral in the long and, in
extreme cases, even the short run. Third, the effects of extra money (whether
quantity, price, or both) cannot be anticipated. All that one can say is that high
rates of capacity utilisation and activist state policies increase the probability of
extra money inflation, but there is never likely to be a simple relationship
between them. In contrast, for the quantity theory the relationship between
money supply and inflation is usually straightforward. Because of the
Inflation Theory: A Critical Literature Review and a New Research Agenda 351
If the domestic currency is legally and easily convertible into a reserve asset
such as gold at a fixed price, there is a strong reserve discipline limiting the
creation of extra money by the commercial banks and the central bank. At the
same time, arbitrage makes it impossible for commodity prices to deviate
permanently from their gold prices of production, although cyclical fluctu-
ations are inevitable. At the risk of oversimplifying the problem, in the boom
demand increases steadily (partly for speculative purposes) and prices tend to
increase, until the rapidly growing mass of debt can no longer be serviced by
the existing income flows. At this point the need for gold as the means of
payment increases rapidly. In order to avoid a potentially catastrophic gold
drain, the central bank must raise the discount rate, in spite of the high degree
of market vulnerability. The high discount rate increases the distress of both
borrowers and lenders, and the scramble for gold by firms and banks leads to
price deflation and rising unemployment. The economy contracts rapidly. ~6
This blind and wasteful mechanism can operate relatively smoothly only if
prices and wages are highly flexible. If they are not (e.g. because of monopoly
power or workers' resistance against nominal wage cuts), the costs of
convertibility may become excessively high because of the distortions which
are continually introduced into the relative price system, and the social and
economic instability which is created by the crises. The elimination of the
nominal anchor allows the central bank to reduce the discount rate and simplify
the access to the discount window at the trough, in order to support industry
and the financial sector. In sum, currency inconvertibility facilitates the creation
of extra money by the state, and may stimulate its creation by the private sector,
which may reduce both the constraints on growth and the contractionary impact
of the crisis. However, currency inconvertibility may also lead to extra money
inflation instead or in spite of the crisis, because it reduces the constraints
imposed by convertibility upon speculative booms, and because inconvertibility
allows the mismatch between the structure of supply and the composition of
demand to increase sharply, which can be an important cause of the crisis.
Currency inconvertibility allows the state (and the banks) to smooth out the
cycles, through the manipulation of the supply of extra money in order to
alleviate temporary cash flow problems and, more controversially, through
352 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
D. Assessment
The extra money approach offers a reasonably well grounded analysis, which
can provide the basis for the development of a theory of inflation which
incorporates the main claims of the labour theory of value and the most
important insights of the previous analyses of inflation. However, the extra
money approach is still undeveloped at critical points, and it suffers from
deficiencies and ambiguities which need to be addressed urgently. Let us start
with its deficiencies. The analysis of the supply of central bank and credit
money is usually very weak and simplistic, and it would benefit from greater
exposure to, and confrontation against, recent Post Keynesian developments
(for a taste of the vast literature, see Arestis & Howells, 1996; Cottrell, 1994;
and Dow, 1996; for a critique, see Lapavitsas & Saad Filho, 2000), circuitist
contributions (Loranger, 1982b; Nell & Deleplace, 1996), and the work of
Kalecki (1990b, 1997; see also Messori, 1991). At a more concrete level of
analysis, the valuable contributions of Minsky (1975, 1986; see also Dymski &
Pollin, 1994) on the intrinsic financial instability of modem capitalism need to
be evaluated in detail and, when this is warranted, their contribution should be
incorporated into the analysis.
This is relatively easy to achieve. However, much work remains to be done
in order to make the structures and categories employed in the extra money
approach fully compatible with those of Marx's theory of value. For example,
the relationship between the supply of money and the monetary expression of
labour (Dum6nil, 1980; Dymski 1990; Foley, 1982) is usually left very unclear.
It is not obvious how newly created (credit or fiat) money is related to value
production and its realisation through sale, and how the monetary expression of
labour fluctuates during the circuit of capital. Moreover, the extra money
approach often shifts arbitrarily between levels of analysis, especially between
capital in general and many capitals; consequently, the role of competition is
left unclear. Finally, further work is necessary to distinguish between price
increases caused by extra money, and those caused by other types of money
supply growth. This would go a long way to clarify the remaining ambiguity
between the extra money approach and the quantity theory of money, especially
with respect to the role of excess demand as the main trigger of inflation.
Addressing these problems in a systematic manner will make it possible to
link the extra money and conflict theories and, at a later stage, to incorporate
systematically the inflationary impact of the concentration of capital and other
important contemporary phenomena such as financial development and
financial and capital account liberalisation. It will also make it possible to
analyse concrete problems such as the potentially inflationary impact of the
354 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
IV. C O N C L U S I O N
This article has analysed critically the three best known Marxian theories of
inflation. They are closely related to one another, and to non-Marxian analyses
such as the Post Keynesian, circuitist, Kaleckian and institutionalist. They
argue, in different ways, that inflation is a historically specific phenomenon, but
its form can be abstractly determined from the broad features of modem
capitalism. However, beyond a certain point concrete studies become necessary
in order to contextualise the analysis. Different alternatives are proposed in
order to overcome the difficult dilemmas imposed by the attempt to explain
inflation in inconvertible money systems, while preserving the endogeneity and
non-neutrality of money. They are also heavily dependent on the context of the
analysis.
These approaches agree that inflation is potentially functional to modem
capitalism, in many different ways. For example, inflation generally leads to
transfers to corporations, banks or the state, which may foster accumulation
through forced savings or by giving a 'second chance' to firms which have
made mistakes in the past. These functional elements were predominant under
creeping inflation, between the late-1940s and the mid-1960s (Aglietta, 1979;
Grou, 1977; Jacobi et al., 1975). There is disagreement about the causes of the
subsequent acceleration of inflation, and they have been reviewed in this
article. There is considerable scope for the further development of Marxian
analyses of inflation, as well as for substantial cross-fertilisation with other
political economy theories.
The conflict and the monopoly capital-underconsumption theories are
especially close to one another. Whilst the latter claims that inflation (and, more
generally, the crisis) is largely a consequence of the excessive strength of the
capitalist class, the former argues that they are due to the excessive strength of
the workers. This can help to explain why one was relatively popular in the
weakly unionised USA, whilst the other became better known in Europe
(Howard & King, 1990; Weisskopf et al., 1985; in contrast, the extra money
approach has been developed mostly by Francophone writers). The extra
money approach is different in its aims and scope and, in my view, it provides
the basis for further theoretical work on the monetary aspect of inflation, that
may encompass the valuable insights of the other approaches. The extra money
approach argues that inflation is necessarily a monetary phenomenon, and it
Inflation Theory: A Critical Literature Review and a New Research Agenda 355
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Suzanne de Brunhoff, Ben Fine, Costas Lapavitsas, Maria de
Lourdes Mollo, Alejandro Ramos, Malcom Sawyer, Jan Toporowski, Paul
Zarembka and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and
suggestions. They are not, however, responsible for the views expressed here.
NOTES
1. The concepts of theory, analysis and approach will be used interchangeably in
what follows.
356 ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO
2. Fine (1997) and Lee and Harley (1998) analyse the decline of non-mainstream
economics. In spite of the substantial differences in scope and method, these papers
reach similarly pessimistic conclusions.
3. Conflict theories are superbly surveyed by Dalziel (1990); see also Lavoie (1992,
ch. 7), and Sawyer (1989, pp. 359-372). Burdekin and Burkett (1996) provide an
outstanding theoretical and empirical investigation, but see also Boddy and Crotty
(1975, 1976), Glyn and Sutcliffe (1972), Green and Sutcliffe (1987), Marglin and Schor
(1990), Palley (1996), Rosenberg and Weisskopf (1981), Rowthorn (1980, chs. 5-6) and
Weintraub (1981). For a critique, see de Brunhoff (1982), Fine and Murfin (1984, ch.
7), Kotz (1987), and Weeks (1979). Obviously inflation, however caused, can create
distributive conflicts, but this effect will be ignored here.
4. See Glyn and Sutcliffe (1972) and Morris (1973). Howard and King (1990)
consider this approach to be merely a variant of Kalecki's (1990a) political business
cycle. For a contemporary analysis, see Brenner (1998), the critiques by Dumrnil and
Lrvy (2000), Fine, Lapavitsas and Milonakis (1999) and the special issue of Historical
Materialism (1999).
5. The classic example of this synthesis is Baran and Sweezy (1966). Clarke (1988)
dissects the 'Keynesian State', and Bleaney (1976) critically examines theories of
underconsumption. Paradoxically, in some of their works Sweezy and Magdoff (1970)
defend the 'price rigidity' theory of inflation (see de Vroey, 1984). In this view, demand
shifts can lead to inflation and unemployment, if prices are sticky elsewhere in the
economy (Howard and King 1990).
6. See Kalecki (1990c) and Sawyer (1985, ch. 2); for a Marxian critique, see Fine
and Murfin (1984). Bleaney (1976, pp. 225-226) rightly argues that it is 'a severe
problem, in writing about modern underconsumption theories, that their influence
seems to have far exceeded the extent of their theoretical exposition'. In spite of this,
underconsumption theories obviously underestimate the importance of competition
(Mandel 1968, p. 363).
7. Marxist theories of the state are discussed by Canlmack (1989), Fine and Harris
(1979, ch. 6) and Holloway and Picciotto (1978).
8. See, however, Mandel (1968, p.527) and Sweezy (1974). Sweezy claims that
Baran (1973) had identified the inflationary danger in Keynesian economics:
government deficit financing is not sustainable in the long run because most government
spending is unproductive (e.g. military expenditures). These expenditures are
potentially inflationary because they increase the ratio between money and commod-
ities, which leads to inflation (see Section III).
9. See Sherman (1972); for a critique, see Weisskopf et al. (1985). Sweezy and
Magdoff (1979, p. 9) tautologically claim that "while monopoly capital may not be the
direct cause of major upward movements of prices, it is nevertheless the necessary
condition for their occurrence... If monopoly is not the motor, it is nonetheless the s i ne
q u a n o n of the extraordinary inflation of the current decade as well as of the preceding
upward spirals."
10. The monopoly capital school has been havily criticised by most Marxists for its
use of the concept of economic surplus and rejection of surplus value; see Weeks (1977,
1982).
11. Aglietta (1979), Brunhoff and Cartelier (1974), Fine (1980, ch. 4), Lipietz (1983)
and de Vroey (1984); see also Loranger (1982a), Mandel (1975, ch. 13), Mattick (1978),
Orlran (1982) and Weeks (1981). Many Post Keynesian writers (e.g. Moore, 1988)
Inflation Theory: A Critical Literature Review and a New Research Agenda 357
argue that if the money supply is endogenous there cannot be excess supply of money.
For a counter-argument, see Hilferding (1981, ch. 5) and Lapavitsas and Saad Filho
(2OO0).
12. Marx's theory of money is reviewed by Arnon (1984L Brunhoff (1976), Itoh and
Lapavitsas (1999) and Saad Filho (1993). The approaches discussed in this article
presume that money has no direct relationship to any 'special' commodity such as gold.
I have analysed elsewhere the conditions underlying the existence of inconvertible paper
money; see Saad Filho (1997, section 3.4). In that paper, I develop a systematic analysis
showing that inconvertible paper money is compatible with Marx's derivation of money
in Capital 1. I also show that commodity money and inconvertible paper money are
equally suited to fulfil the function.
13. Lapavitsas and Saad Filho (2000) and Mollo (1999) show that Marx's notion of
endogeneity is broader than the better known Post Keynesian approaches outlined by
Minsky (1975, 1986) and Moore (1988).
14. Some horizontalist Post Keynesians, following Kaldor (1982), argue that
'excessive' bank loans will be passed around until they reach someone with an
outstanding loan, who will use the funds to repay the loan; in this sense, there can be
no excess money. This argument overlooks the fact that the money increases demand
across many sectors of the economy until it is destroyed, and that it may be used, for
example, to inflate a speculative bubble. I owe this insight to Malcom Sawyer.
15. Systems of provision are described by Fine and Leopold (1993) and Saad Filho
(2000). Indexation violates this tendency, because sectors not directly affected by a
given price increase will respond automatically. Indexation accelerates the devaluation
of money, because it perpetuates the successive rounds of price increases across the
economy.
16. See Aglietta (1979), Itoh and Lapavitsas (1999) and Weeks (1981). This analysis
can explain cycles under contemporary currency board systems with only minor
changes.
17. The possibility that the state may deliberately engineer a recession shows that the
state has a certain discretionary power with respect to the determination of the interest
rates and the nominal supply of money and, therefore, that it influences the level of
economic activity. This does not imply that the money supply is exogenous. It was
shown in Section III.B above that the supply of money is determined by the interaction
between the central bank, the commercial banking and financial system, the exporters,
producers, workers and other sectors of the economy. None of them has complete
control over the supply of money, although each of them can influence it in a certain
(possibly conflicting) direction,
18. This conclusion is very similar to that of Minsky (1986), which reinforces de
Vroey's (1984) argument about the potential compatibility between the extra money
approach and (Post) Keynesian analyses.
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